NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Trektellen, the website that collates migration counts, is a wonderful place to while away a few hours.  This Dutch site has spread its wings across Europe, and the number of contributing sites - including British - keeps on growing. As much as most of us think of meaningful visible migration counts coming from coastal sites, there are a number of inland sites that have provided some excellent data. As a county, Surrey is poorly represented. I thought it about time to increase its contribution. Anybody who has visited this blog on a regular basis will know that I love watching migration in action, particularly if it is local to me here in Banstead. It just means more. Luckily I have two sites on my doorstep (one of them literally) that provides such thrills. My garden has a good track record in the autumn - thrush rushes (4,000 Redwings in a day), four figure hirundine days, hundreds of finches, pipits, the odd unexpected bird (Woodlark, Golden Plover, Honey Buzzard, Hawfinch) - ...

A few posts ago, I mentioned that this coming August sees the 30th anniversary of moth trapping our Banstead garden. This is the first in a (short) series of posts looking back on what has been recorded. First up, the migrants. The bread-and-butter migrants, those that we can all expect to record wherever we may be, are Silver Y , Dark Sword-grass , Pearly Underwing , Rush Veneer ( Nomophila noctuella ), Rusty Dot Pearl ( Udea ferrugalis ) and Diamond-back Moth ( Plutella xylostella ). All have been annual here, but vary greatly in number each year. 1996 was a good summer for migrants, and from early June Silver Y, noctuella , ferrugalis and xylostella were plentiful. Silver Y counts regularly reached 50-100 during that summer, with a count of 2,000 in Nork Park on June 9 showing the true numbers locally (the park is only 800m away from the garden). One other 'event' is worth mentioning from this group of commoner migrants, that being the invasion of xylostella during J...

Please spare a thought for those summer migrants that just cannot make up their their minds whether to leave our shores or not, even though they really should do. Whether it's down to laziness, incompetence or a lack of physical ability, a rough time awaits them if they leave it too late, or try to winter. Here is a list of my current, latest ever dates. I've even put the place of observation alongside them... you lucky people. Garganey - wintering (Holmethorpe SP, Surrey 2011-12) Honey Buzzard - 10 October 1981 (Dungeness, Kent) Osprey - 4 December 1979 (Gatton Park, Surrey) Hobby - 31 October 1988 (Dungeness, Kent) Quail - 31 October 1987 (Dungeness, Kent) Little Ringed Plover - 24 September 1983 (Pagham Harbour, West Sussex) Common Sandpiper - wintering (several places) Sandwich Tern - 7 November 2015 (Dungeness, Kent) Common Tern - 6 November 2015 (Dungeness, Kent) Arctic Tern - 30 October 1988 (Dungeness, Kent) Little Tern - 6 October 1985 (Dungeness...

March 1st never fails to get me excited. It says "Spring". It says "lighter evenings". It says "migrants". But all too often, after several days of the third month, nothing much has really changed. There might be a handful of early migrants reported on the coast, but generally these will fizzle away and leave us wondering if we dreamed about such observations. It is then that I believe that what March really says is "fooled you again, sucker..." It happens every year. A warmish mid-March day will provide a few butterflies, a Wheatear and a Little Ringed Plover. I will stand there breathing in the air as if it is charged with life itself (which I suppose it is), look around at the rude health of the fresh green vegetation lit by the sunlight and marvel at the hundreds of insects that have come to life. And then, the following day, all has been replaced by a nasty cold wind, scudding low grey clouds and the natural world seems to have retreated a...

It's March and that means summer migrants! Well, it doesn't really, does it. It might mean a few hardy early migrants making landfall, perhaps a fall or two at the months end, but there will be plenty of days when the winter will still rule, it will feel like December and the Sand Martin that enchanted us in mid-March will regret the day that it crossed the channel so early. But regardless of all that pragmatism, summer migrants will arrive soon enough, so in celebration of these eagerly anticipated events I've raided my notebooks to bring you my earliest ever dates for the commoner (and some scarcer) summer migrants. Being a largely inland and weekend birder has meant that some of these dates are not all that impressive. If you live by the coast, and get out regularly, you will beat this lot into a cocked hat. Garganey 27 March 1982 (Dungeness) - also recorded wintering Montagu's Harrier 19 May 2014 (Dungeness) Osprey 28 April 1996 (Stodmarsh) - also recorded w...